DOTD For Monday, November 3, 2025

A Drink To Celebrate The Art Of Mixing Drinks...

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is The Sidecar Cocktail inspired by the birth of David Embury who wrote The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks in 1948. Embury was not a bartender. As he put it, “My practical experience with liquors has been entirely as a consumer and as a shaker-upper of drinks for the delectation of my guests. This book is, therefore, purely and distinctly a book written by an amateur for amateurs.”

David Embury was born in Pine Woods, New York, in 1886. He ended up going to Cornell University and then to Columbia Law School. From there, he became a tax attorney, rising to the level of senior partner at the well-established Manhattan law firm of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt, & Mosie.

Being a tax attorney is enough to make anyone drink, and Mr. Embury was no exception. We can’t say exactly when he started drinking, but he clearly set out to do something more useful with his life than just drink & practice tax law. By the late 1940s, he’d put his accumulated wisdom of mixology on paper and improved mankind’s fate, publishing his book in 1948.

Embury was the first to list foundational cocktails that anyone tending bar should learn how to mix properly, and he discusses each at length. His six foundational drinks were the Martini, the Manhattan, the Old Fashioned, the Daiquiri, the Jack Rose, and the Sidecar. Embury’s choices were largely the most popular drinks at the time, but his concept has been carried forward by others.

The Sidecar cocktail is a true classic, popular when invented and popular today, the most iconic of all Cognac cocktails. Embury claims it was invented by a friend of his at a bar in Paris during World War I and contained “six or seven” ingredients back then.

The Sidecar first appeared in print in Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails and Cocktails: How to Mix Them, which was published by London bartenders in 1922. The first Sidecar recipes called for equal parts of Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice, and were considered quite tart by today’s standards.

The recipe for today’s Drink Of The Day straddles the line between sweet and sour, so depending upon your own tastes you may choose to sugar the rim of the glass. or not. Doing so is entirely optional, & most common in the U.S., while less so in Europe.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: